Refrigerators have been constructed so that thermostats may be manually adjusted by the user to change the thermostat setting and thus control the temperature inside the refrigerator. In somne refrigerators the control to adjust the thermostat is located at the front of the refrigerator and the thermostat is located adjacent the rear wall of the refrigerator. In most refrigerators an evaporator of the refrigerant system is located adjacent to the fieezer compartment either in the rear wall of the freezer compartment or in the mullion partition separating the freezer compartment from the fresh food compartment. A portion of the cold air resulting from the operation of the evaporator flows into the freezer compartment and a portion is directed to flow into the fresh food compartment. Typically, the thermostat controls the operation of the refrigerant system and is positioned in the fresh food compartment to sense the temperature of the air within the fresh food compartment. The thermostat sensor is located adjacent the cold air entry port into the fresh food compartment which in most cases is at the rear of the compartment.
When the temperature inside the refrigerator reaches a preset upper limit the thermostat turns on the compressor and the refrigerant system is operated in the normal manner to reduce the temperature of the interior compartment of the refrigerator. When the temperature reaches a preset lower limit the thermostat turns the compressor off. It is also known to provide a control adjustment of a damper that controls the amount of air passing through the cold air entry port into the refrigerator compartment. The thermostat control generally maintains the temperature of the refrigerator including the fresh food compartment and the freezer compartment at a set level. The damper control then controls the amount of air entering into the refrigerator compartment so that the relative temperature of the refrigerator relative to the freezer compartment can be adjusted and controlled.
There have been numerous designs for providing housings for permitting manual control of the damper and for providing illumination into the fresh food compartment. However, most damper controls are complicated and require sophisticated mounting and in some instances may not be readily accessible for repair. With respect to the lighting systems, in many refrigerators, the control for the thermostats requires additional light guides in the form of fiber optics or requires the use of an additional lamp source immediately behind the dials used to control either the thermostat and/or the damper. The fiber optics or additional light source are additional costs factors.